No Defense – narratives of racial progress are white fantasies rooted in the continued obfuscation of racial suffering and cannot assume the systematic dehumanization that the racial wealth gap perpetuates.

Racial economic inequality is a foundational feature of the United States, yet many Americans appear oblivious to it. In the present work we consider the psychology underlying this collective willful ignorance. Drawing on prior research and new evidence from a nationally representative sample of adults (N = 1,008), we offer compelling evidence that Americans vastly underestimate racial economic inequality, especially the racial wealth gap. In particular, respondents thought that the Black–White wealth gap was smaller, by around 40 percentage points in 1963 and around 80 percentage points in 2016, than its actual size. We then consider the motivational, cognitive, and structural factors that are likely to contribute to these misperceptions and suggest directions for future research to test these ideas. Importantly, we highlight the implications of our collective ignorance of racial economic inequality and the challenge of creating greater accuracy in perceptions of these racial economic disparities, as well as outline the steps policymakers might take to create messages on this topic that effectively promote equity-enhancing policies. We close with an appeal to psychological science to at least consider, if not center, the racial patterning of these profound economic gaps.

Despite America’s tumultuous racial history (Massey & Denton, 1993), Americans generally believe the nation has made steady, consistent progress toward achieving racial equality (Brodish, Brazy, & Devine, 2008; Eibach & Keegan, 2006; Fisman, Jakiela, Kariv, & Markovits, 2015; Kraus & Tan, 2015). Narratives highlighting America’s path toward, if not achievement of, racial equality dominate national discourse, are widely communicated in both literature and popular culture, and are strongly endorsed in attitude surveys (Reeves, 2018). In this article, we argue and offer evidence that these beliefs about the inevitable march toward racial equality, especially in the context of wealth, are overly optimistic and unfounded.

We begin with a summary of recent evidence highlighting Americans’ general optimism regarding national progress toward racial economic equality, a pattern that is particularly striking and inaccurate with respect to disparities in wealth. We then explore the motivational and cognitive processes that support and sustain these misperceptions, as well as some of the larger sociocultural and structural factors that underlie them. We then move toward a consideration of the role of psychology and psychologists in shifting the political and societal discourse regarding racial economic inequality, examining whether our understanding of the factors that undergird these misperceptions may be used in service of crafting messages to promote equity-enhancing economic policies. We close with a discussion of the potential dire implications of failing to consider the racial patterning of economic inequality, a feature of American life that is central to, yet largely misperceived in, public consciousness.

The Racial-Progress Narrative

A firm belief in our nation’s commitment to racial egalitarianism is a part of the collective consciousness of the United States of America. Indeed, we have a strong and persistent belief that our national disgrace of racial oppression has been overcome, albeit through struggle, and that racial equality has largely already been achieved (Pinkney, 1986; Seamster & Ray, 2018). Take, for instance, how relatively easy it is to conjure bellwether moments of racial progress, such as the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, and the election of Barack Obama as the first Black President of the United States in 2008. By contrast, periods of retrenchment of the racial hierarchy, such as racial terror in the form of lynchings throughout the 19th century and much of the 20th, the rise of Jim Crow laws in 1877 and continuing through the 1960s, and the 1985 bombing of Black liberation activists (i.e., MOVE) by the Philadelphia police, or even the racial injustices of the present political moment (e.g., voter suppression; police-involved shootings of unarmed Black and Latinx citizens) that are often glossed over or minimized (Anderson, 2016). Even under conditions in which moments of racial retrenchment and associated activism seem to shift implicit and explicit racial attitudes (Sawyer & Gampa, 2018), these changes rarely manifest themselves in material progress toward racial economic equality. When it comes to race relations in the United States, in other words, most Americans hold an unyielding belief in a specific, optimistic narrative regarding racial progress that is robust to counterexamples: that society has come a very long way already and is moving rapidly and perhaps naturally toward full racial equality (Eibach & Ehrlinger, 2006; Hur & Ruttan, 2019).

Indeed, although there has undoubtedly been some progress toward racial equality since the nation’s founding, the American racial-progress narrative, we argue, overestimates the successes and underestimates the setbacks, resulting in an unfounded optimism about racial equality in both the present and its prospects for the future. For instance, as early as 1977, the majority of respondents to the General Social Survey (2016) reported holding the belief that racial differences in many societal outcomes are no longer due to racial discrimination and, further, that job earnings and promotions are determined fairly. In a sense, even limited progress and the mechanisms that give rise to it (e.g., changes in the law) are readily reinterpreted as the goal of racial equality itself being achieved (Eibach & Purdie-Vaughns, 2011). For instance, the Brown decision striking down the segregation of public schools gets misinterpreted as the attainment of racial integration (e.g., Harris & Lieberman, 2015). Likewise, a reduction in the acceptance of public expressions of racial prejudice gets reinterpreted as the eradication of such prejudice in the hearts and minds of Americans (Bonilla-Silva, 2017; Crandall, Eshleman, & O’Brien, 2002; Devine, 1989). We propose that this pattern of overinterpretation is indicative of a widespread belief that racial inequality in most societal domains is minimal or rapidly regressing (Bonilla-Silva, 2017; Eibach & Keegan, 2006; see also Pinkney, 1986). If Americans are overly optimistic about our achievement of racial equality, as we argue, then they are unlikely to consider equity-enhancing policies with the seriousness and urgency they deserve (e.g., DeBell, 2017). In other words, an accurate accounting of the magnitude of racial inequality in society is a prerequisite for reparative action.